What is this hour of temptation? It is not an hour at the very end of the current age. It is not any specific time of trial. It is a time of trial which shall come upon the whole world in the sense that there will be a great trial in every generation. Every age of the church faces some great test or trial, and it is the church that is in view here, not all the people in the world. The church, wherever it is in the world, in every day and age, there will always be a great test. In our day it is atheism, the hostility of atheism. In their day it was the hostility of idolatry. But we will be kept faithful and held, if we love him, if we make known his name, and we keep and honour his word, and do not deny him. He will keep us from falling in our weakness to whatever the great threat or trial our day presents to us.
There is perhaps here a looking forward to the final trial which believers will live through once the antichrist is revealed. That hour will require God’s people to be faithful unto death and to overcome by faith. But that hour will be foreshadowed many times as each generation of believers has to face their own persecution. Satan does not try to destroy the church only at the end of the age. He is struggling throughout the gospel age to set the beast on his throne. It is God who delays the final kingdom of antichrist until the end, not the devil. Therefore all the persecutions that the church has endured are related to that final dreadful trial. The final form of the kingdom of darkness is the clearest. It will be a trial for the church, and will reveal the willingness of every man, woman, and child to stand on the Lord’s side or to side with the powers of darkness. If this is the correct interpretation, then as so often in the book, what takes place throughout the age is described in terms of its final form.